Speaking as one who has the UK's analogue, Freeview (digitial terestial) and Sky (digital satalite) here's my experiences of the different options.
As a caveat, my analogue signal is perfect, as far as I can tell. I never have a problem with ghosting, snowy picture or anything else no matter the conditions.
With Freeview, certain blocks of channels dissapear if it's foggy, raining, too warm or too windy - depending on the conditions I might loose all the bbc channels, or all the itv channels (no real loss there) or any other 'block' ( i believe the spectrum is devided up into about 5 or six blocks in which the channels are broadcast).
With Satalite, it's usualy rain that gets it, if it's pissing it down outside our sky reception just fails: blue-screen and no sound. That's with a dish that is just pointed at sky, no trees or anything similar in between it and the satalite.
I'd say that with all said and done I'd rather have the Analogue signal over either digital option. I prefer gradual degredation to the working / not digital approach.
Quality-wise, even when both digital options are working to their best extent, simply watch a football match and just see the pixelation and artifacts appear. Even a snowy/ghosting analogue picture beats the crap out of ITV or Five showing a football match, especially if the weather is a bit odd (see above)
Even the interactive elements (reading news stories etc) seem very slow and poor in comparison with simple teletext. I realise it's probably the rotating number giving me an impression that it's at least/doing/ something, but at least teletext doesn't seem to crash out, returning out to the program with at least 20 keypresses (press your RED button now!) to get back to the same place.
But we're getting more choice! That's what we're told. More choice is better for us. Despite the choise on freeview being the same 5 channles you get on analogue + a load of shopping channels, or on sky it being 400 channels of absolute shite (see shopping channels, music etc). Quality seems to go out the window when 'choice' is increased.
Er, I'm not a digitial-tv luddite at all really, I just wish they'd concentrate on quality image, sound and content over offering more and more increasingly banal channels.
The problem in the UK is that the digital channels aired over freeview are, visual quality-wise, complete shite. You only have to watch a game of football or any other sport on a digital terrestial channel and compare it to the same analog signal to realise that digital doesn't even come close. The mpeg artifacts just ruin the whole thing.
Experiences with both freeview and sky-digital have taught me that as soon as it's not uk-average weather, both of these systems break-up and you're left watching a blue-screen. Admitedly, Sky will put up with a lot more than freeview, where fog, heat, rain or simply trees in the way can seriously degrade a signal below it's error threshold.
Whenever these 'superior digital' means of television broadcast fail I simply return to the analog signal. Which, despite my mere-human faculties, appears to be just as good quality in any weather.
Don't even get started on DAB digital radio! Sweet Zombie Jesus that sucks. Due to the need for 'choice' we have national and regional stations broadcast in bitrates that make AM/MW look good, never mind the 'cd quality' we were assured.
Oh yeah, and Ceefax/Teletext is so much faster than digital text.
So, in short, digital sucks. Analog rules!
(turning into more of a luddite as the days wear on)
YOu know, I couldn't help but read both articles and think "Jesus fucking Christ! Why didn't he do this on Mandrake? Mandrakes printer config tool opens up with a recommended printer and scans everything, and disables what doesn't work. Eric's looking for Mandrake!"
And that's an example of the typical response to anyone who presents a valid, well written problem with linux software. "You tried to get feature-x working with distro-y? What an asshole, you should use distro z as it does this so much better.
That's what pisses me off so much about the linux community, most of the time when asking a question one will be derided for one's choice and then told that another distro is much better. ! news flash ! this doesn't help anyone!
I asked some well writen, polite questions in a linux forum about fedora core and rather than getting the answers, was I derided and astounded by the 'don't even think about it on that, get mandrake instead' or some other distro.
No-one seems to understand that a distro might be chosen for certain reasons and that changing is not an option, things have to be made made to work.
On old hardware i used slackware and that was fine. On my new hardware I've tried mandrake, and I couldn't get certain hardware running. I tried fedora and it worked fine. Hence my choice. Plus mandrake didn't come with some software that i wanted, which would have required a great deal of downloading which on a dialup account (that i couldn't get to work with under mandrake, but could under fedora), was unacceptable.
Despite whether the parent is a troll or just some random asshat, the answers to fundamental questions about getting software to work are just not forthcoming from the community. Despite the hatred of windows software that most slashdotters seem to have none can show a piece of software that is easier to setup than it's windows equivilent.
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Speaking as one who has the UK's analogue, Freeview (digitial terestial) and Sky (digital satalite) here's my experiences of the different options.
/doing/ something, but at least teletext doesn't seem to crash out, returning out to the program with at least 20 keypresses (press your RED button now!) to get back to the same place.
As a caveat, my analogue signal is perfect, as far as I can tell. I never have a problem with ghosting, snowy picture or anything else no matter the conditions.
With Freeview, certain blocks of channels dissapear if it's foggy, raining, too warm or too windy - depending on the conditions I might loose all the bbc channels, or all the itv channels (no real loss there) or any other 'block' ( i believe the spectrum is devided up into about 5 or six blocks in which the channels are broadcast).
With Satalite, it's usualy rain that gets it, if it's pissing it down outside our sky reception just fails: blue-screen and no sound. That's with a dish that is just pointed at sky, no trees or anything similar in between it and the satalite.
I'd say that with all said and done I'd rather have the Analogue signal over either digital option. I prefer gradual degredation to the working / not digital approach.
Quality-wise, even when both digital options are working to their best extent, simply watch a football match and just see the pixelation and artifacts appear. Even a snowy/ghosting analogue picture beats the crap out of ITV or Five showing a football match, especially if the weather is a bit odd (see above)
Even the interactive elements (reading news stories etc) seem very slow and poor in comparison with simple teletext. I realise it's probably the rotating number giving me an impression that it's at least
But we're getting more choice! That's what we're told. More choice is better for us. Despite the choise on freeview being the same 5 channles you get on analogue + a load of shopping channels, or on sky it being 400 channels of absolute shite (see shopping channels, music etc). Quality seems to go out the window when 'choice' is increased.
Er, I'm not a digitial-tv luddite at all really, I just wish they'd concentrate on quality image, sound and content over offering more and more increasingly banal channels.
The problem in the UK is that the digital channels aired over freeview are, visual quality-wise, complete shite. You only have to watch a game of football or any other sport on a digital terrestial channel and compare it to the same analog signal to realise that digital doesn't even come close. The mpeg artifacts just ruin the whole thing.
Experiences with both freeview and sky-digital have taught me that as soon as it's not uk-average weather, both of these systems break-up and you're left watching a blue-screen. Admitedly, Sky will put up with a lot more than freeview, where fog, heat, rain or simply trees in the way can seriously degrade a signal below it's error threshold.
Whenever these 'superior digital' means of television broadcast fail I simply return to the analog signal. Which, despite my mere-human faculties, appears to be just as good quality in any weather.
Don't even get started on DAB digital radio! Sweet Zombie Jesus that sucks. Due to the need for 'choice' we have national and regional stations broadcast in bitrates that make AM/MW look good, never mind the 'cd quality' we were assured.
Oh yeah, and Ceefax/Teletext is so much faster than digital text.
So, in short, digital sucks. Analog rules!
(turning into more of a luddite as the days wear on)
YOu know, I couldn't help but read both articles and think "Jesus fucking Christ! Why didn't he do this on Mandrake? Mandrakes printer config tool opens up with a recommended printer and scans everything, and disables what doesn't work. Eric's looking for Mandrake!"
And that's an example of the typical response to anyone who presents a valid, well written problem with linux software. "You tried to get feature-x working with distro-y? What an asshole, you should use distro z as it does this so much better.
That's what pisses me off so much about the linux community, most of the time when asking a question one will be derided for one's choice and then told that another distro is much better.
! news flash ! this doesn't help anyone!
I asked some well writen, polite questions in a linux forum about fedora core and rather than getting the answers, was I derided and astounded by the 'don't even think about it on that, get mandrake instead' or some other distro.
No-one seems to understand that a distro might be chosen for certain reasons and that changing is not an option, things have to be made made to work.
On old hardware i used slackware and that was fine. On my new hardware I've tried mandrake, and I couldn't get certain hardware running. I tried fedora and it worked fine. Hence my choice. Plus mandrake didn't come with some software that i wanted, which would have required a great deal of downloading which on a dialup account (that i couldn't get to work with under mandrake, but could under fedora), was unacceptable. Despite whether the parent is a troll or just some random asshat, the answers to fundamental questions about getting software to work are just not forthcoming from the community. Despite the hatred of windows software that most slashdotters seem to have none can show a piece of software that is easier to setup than it's windows equivilent.